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fSP SESREli','SSMIN"Fh9E1
down the trail rendered communist order of battle
projections difficult, at best.
(U) This inability to determine infiltration
rates would later affect the OB estimates developed
by CIA and MACV - especially during the
famous Sam Adams controversy - since the question
of how many regular PAVNtroops were coming
south was important in calculating the communist
troop strength facing Allied forces. Bylate
1967 MACV would be claiming that it had reached
the "crossover point," that is, the infiltration (and
recruitment) rates could not make up for losses
suffered in battle. This created the illusion - and
one not dispelled by the Johnson administration
at the time - that the Indochina War was being
won. This illusion was shattered on the morning
of Tet. (See Chapter 7, pages 311-313, for more
detail on the Sam Adams OB controversy.)
(TS//SI) Beginning in mid-March 1964 and
continuing into early 1965, SIGINT analysts plotted
an expansion of the communications network
supporting the infiltration. The network had
expanded to eighteen stations with a definite
southward thrust of their locations. Two new subordinate
control stations appeared. Both were
located in Laos: one near Chavane right on the
trail, the other near A Rum at the western end of
the A Shau valley.84 What American analysts saw,
especially at the new station at A Rum, was a significant
increase in the amount of communications
activity exceeding all previous levels. 85
(TS//SI) What SIGINT had detected, though
it could not identify the precise cause, was the
change in Hanoi's approach to the war in the
south. In December 1963, after the deaths of
Diem and Kennedy, the Central Committee of the
Lao Dong Party had met to consider the new situation
in South Vietnam. Party secretary Le
Duan, who always was an advocate of a stronger,
confrontational strategy when it came to Saigon,
had urged a greater commitment to the struggle
by the southerners. The practical military problem
the southern communists faced was the
increased firepower of the ARVN forces. With a
larger American advisor effort and more numerous,
technically sophisticated weapons available,
Saigon's forces had the NLF units at a tactical disadvantage.
Furthermore, if the Americans intervened
directly, then the prospects of an early victory
would evaporate. Then the war would
become a protracted affair, not unlike the eightyear
struggle with the French. In this case, the
southern region would be the major battlefield.
North Vietnam would become a "revolutionary
base for the whole nation," which meant, in
essence, the supply effort would originate in
Hanoi and that there would be the need to send to
the south entire regular PAVN combat units to
face the ARVN and the Americans.86
(U) Bythe middle of 1964, supply traffic down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail increased substantially,
including large caches of weapons coming directly
from the Soviet Union and the People's
Republic of China. But, more critically, Hanoi
finally dispatched the first regular PAVN unit
southward. Instead of a mixed bag of cadre, officers,
and specialists, to be dispensed among
already established VC units, down the trail came
the first complete unit of the PAVN, the independent
808th Battalion. More critically for the
course of the war, a few months later subordinate
units of the PAVN 325th Division started south.
Two of the division's three regiments, the 95th,
and 101st, along with its support elements, infiltrated
south down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. (The
third regiment, the 18th, would arrive a year
later.) By early 1965, the 325th had settled just
inside the Laotian border across from Quang
Nam and Kontum Provinces, South Vietnam. 8;
(TS//SI) There has been a claim that signals
intelligence was first to detect the arrival of the
325th Division.I" Intercept sites did detect
increased levels of communications support on
the infiltration network. However, the significance
of this activity remained obscure to SIGINT
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